The Montreal Canadiens have spent the last few years slowly building through the draft. And they have built an exceptional young core for the organization going forward.
The Montreal Canadiens barely missed the playoffs last season. They missed by a wide margin the year before. Before that they won their division but were knocked out of the postseason in the opening round. A year prior to that they had missed the playoffs altogether.
That means the Montreal Canadiens have missed the postseason for three of the past four seasons, and have not won a playoff series since “The Hamburglar” was a phenomenon with the Ottawa Senators.
That is not the biggest story of success around the National Hockey League. Missing the playoffs three out of four years and not winning a playoff round in that time isn’t salary-cap-era Toronto Maple Leafs level of incompetence, but it is not good. It is time for this team to get back to the postseason and start making some noise when they get there.
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The thing that baffles me about the team’s struggles lately, is the panic that seems to have been induced surrounding the team. The narrative that this is an aging core that is only going to get worse and isn’t good enough to win. The idea that they will be among the oldest teams in the league and fall apart before they ever get better.
It’s all just nonsense. Take a look at the Habs roster. It’s pretty obvious that they have a 31 year old goaltender and a 33 year old defenceman that they rely on. However, after that they have one of the youngest rosters in the entire league.
The thing is, Carey Price and Shea Weber are the two biggest cap hits on the team and the two oldest players. That doesn’t mean the entire team is aging, or that you can’t build a winner around an excellent 31-year-old goalie and a 33 year old elite-level shutdown defender.
Carey Price is coming off a season where he posted exceptional numbers. His goals-against-average of 2.49 and his .918 save percentage were both top ten among goalies that started at least half of their team’s games last season. He put up those numbers without a reliable backup to give him a break so he had the second most starts in the league.
If he can be among the best goalies in the league while being the second busiest at the age of 31, I think we can be reasonably certain he will be just fine for the next few years.
Weber is 33 and will turn 34 before next season starts. Luckily, he will be in the lineup when the season starts after missing the first 24 games last season. A full training camp and a summer preparing for hockey season should have him in better shape than a summer of rehab and recovery from knee surgeries.
Weber was still a force when he stepped into the Habs lineup. He played a total of 58 games, scoring 14 goals, 19 assists and 33 points. Over a full season, that pace would put him at 20 goals, 27 assists and 47 points.
The only defenceman to score 20 goals last season was Morgan Rielly of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Scoring 47 points would have put him in a tie for 14th among blue liners with his old defence partner Ryan Suter.
He still averaged 23:29 in ice time per game after coming back from his surgeries, ranking him 25th in average ice time among all defensemen while playing significant minutes in all situations. This would suggest even at age 33 Weber can play a shutdown role, bring a huge presence to a power play and eat up top pairing minutes.
He has seven more years left on his contract with a cap hit of about $7.8 million. Watching Jacob Trouba and Kevin Hayes sign similar contracts this summer tells me the Shea Weber deal isn’t as bad as non-Habs fans want you to believe it is. Sure, he will be 34 years old, but he could easily lead defencemen in goals next season while playing close to 25 minutes per night.
Did the St. Louis Blues have to apologize to anyone for having a 35 year old Jay Bouwmeester playing in their top four when they won the Cup this year? Were the Boston Bruins penalized negatively in any way because Zdeno Chara was in their top four at the age of 42 in the Stanley Cup Final?
I didn’t think so. There aren’t many players around the league you can compare to Shea Weber over the past few years, but the closest comparison is definitely Chara. He is still playing a shutdown role for the Bruins and is nine years older than Weber. Maybe Weber’s contract won’t be a fantastic bargain at the end of it, but it looks just fine right now and he isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.
So, the Habs have two older players on their team. However, they are both playing at an elite level and should continue to do so for several years. People seem to forget that these two players can still contribute in a very positive way. They also seem to forget the Habs will have 23 players on their roster, not two.
The other 21 players are among the youngest group on any NHL team. Last season, the Habs forwards were the youngest in the entire league with an average age under 26. Their defence, even with Weber, was ranked 16th which is literally the middle of the pack. Their goaltending tandem was ranked 28th, but they have since replaced Antti Niemi who was one of the oldest goalies in the league with Keith Kinkaid who is six years younger.
Montreal’s actual core, if you are keeping track at home, doesn’t consist of two players. The core of the team they are building right now includes a 19 year old Jesperi Kotkaniemi, 20 year old Ryan Poehling, 21 year old Victor Mete, 24 year olds Max Domi, Jonathan Drouin and Artturi Lehkonen, 26 year old Phillip Danault and a 27 year old Brendan Gallagher as well as Weber and Price.
Weber and Price alone are not the core of this team. They are the veteran savvy of the team and the leadership group of the team. They are also still damn good hockey players too.
There will come a time when Weber is not as effective as he is right now, especially offensively. Luckily, the Canadiens have a trio of great young right-shooting defence prospects in Noah Juulsen, Josh Brook and Cale Fleury.
All they need is one of those three to turn into a top four defenceman in two years time, when Jeff Petry‘s contract is up and he could be moving on. Then, the Habs will still have Weber, and two of the aforementioned prospects on the right side.
In goal, there will be a time when Carey Price is no longer the starting goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens. Fortunately, they have prepared for such an occasion. The Habs have the best goaltending prospect in the world in Cayden Primeau set to start with the Laval Rocket next season.
Is the Montreal Canadiens core getting too old? Is the team in panic mode to win now? No. They don’t have an aging core, they have an exciting young core and also have two of the best veterans in the league to show them how to realize their full potential while playing for the Montreal Canadiens.